The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  Have courage, she told herself. This was only the beginning of her journey: a few meagre hours out of the weeks that lay ahead. Could she survive such a journey, through terrain that would soon become far crueller and more hostile than the dull rock-strewn wastes they had thus far traversed? Was it mad to think she could make such a perilous journey? Was it dangerously selfish even to try? Already she was plagued with doubt and they had hardly made a start. Mariata touched her amulet to ward away these bad thoughts, and as she did so they crested a rocky rise and saw the green palms of Tahani in the distance.

  Lying in the shade of the oasis trees while the hobbled camels methodically chewed their way through what vegetation they could find, and Atisi ag Baye sat on an outcrop keeping watch for bandits or rogue troops, Mariata dozed. And as she dozed she dreamt. She was back in the Adagh and the rhythmic sound of the breeze that rattled the palm fronds above her transformed itself magically into the distant tap of drums and the singing of wedding songs, and she was lying not on the hard ground wrapped in a smelly camel-hair blanket but on a soft bed in her own bridal tent, with fragrant incense burning in a dish, wrapped in the arms of her husband, breathing in his warm and vital scent as they lay skin to skin beneath a cover embroidered with rows of geometric red camels that marched across a background of gold. By the light of the candle-lantern she saw over Amastan’s burnished shoulder how the stylized flowers sewn into the coverlet’s borders made pretty star shapes just like one of the mosaic tileworks she had seen in the mosque at Tamanrassett, and she sighed contentedly. Could any person be so happy? She did not think so. They were married at last and no one could ever separate them now: they were one flesh; man and woman brought together to be each other’s eyes and ears and hearts. They would be together for ever; they would have a dozen children and establish a new dynasty, honouring the name of Tin Hinan. And with their flocks and their camels they would travel the salt road for the rest of their lives, moving from one fertile oasis to the next, free from constraints, living lightly on the land, at one with the spirits. Warmth cocooned her, hazing her thoughts. She drifted contentedly, half aware of the distant drumming and of the regularity of Amastan’s breathing as his chest rose and fell against her own.

  After the longest time she heard a voice. Amastan was talking to her, whispering in her ear. She struggled up through the heavy waves of sleep that had engulfed her, trying to break the surface of consciousness. What was he saying? Something important, something crucial … She fought for clarity, strained to listen.

  ‘Lady …’

  A hand on her shoulder. A chill on her face.

  With a start, she jolted upright. But the hand that had touched her was not Amastan’s but an old man’s, his face seamed and weathered by passing decades, and the chill she had felt was his shadow falling across her. Who was he? For many seconds she did not know, could not think because of the panicked batter of her heart. Then the man withdrew and hot light fell on her once more, so that she blinked and squinted at the dazzle of sun through the palm branches overhead, branches that replaced the dark and comforting cocoon of her marriage tent. Bewildered, she closed her eyes and reached after the dream, trying to focus on the material details that would bring it back to her, wrap its alternative reality around her and comfort her. Tatters of its gorgeous imagery trailed away like mist burned off by the rising sun. The coverlet, she thought wildly, clutching to herself the marching camels and the star-like flowers. For a moment she could feel the cool cotton beneath her fingers and the raised texture of the stitching. And then she remembered where last she had seen that lush embroidery: in her Aunt Dassine’s tent in the Aïr Mountains, on the night Rhossi ag Bahedi had tried to force himself upon her. Where it likely still lay. She had never taken it with her to the Adagh, had hardly taken anything of her own on her flight through the Tamesna with Rahma, the mother of Amastan.

  Amastan …

  The loss of him struck her anew and she gave a ragged cry and then began to weep bitterly, broken once more by the loss of all hope.

  Atisi ag Baye drew back. Despite the long years of his life, his experience with women was limited. Their volcanic emotions he found far stranger and more confusing than the simple exigencies of the desert. And so he walked a discreet distance away and set up his little brazier to make some tea. In his experience, a glass of sweet green tea made everyone feel better: it was one of Allah’s gifts to man.

  By the time he came back, Mariata’s sobbing had quietened, though the tracks of her tears still stained her cheeks. He handed the glass to her without a word and she took it with a slight inclination of her head to indicate her appreciation of the gesture, then drank the contents while staring morosely at the ground. After a long while she said, ‘I have something to tell you. It is not pretty or pleasant, and my circumstances are such that you may reconsider your offer to guide me through the desert.’ Her voice was hoarse; she paused, gathering herself.

  Atisi sat quietly waiting. He had learnt his patience from his long dealing with camels, which after women were surely the most intractable creatures God ever made. Besides, he sensed a story in the air and he knew that all stories have their own way of being told and can never be hurried.

  And so at last Mariata told the old trader her tale. When she described Amastan’s affliction being a sickness brought upon him by the Kel Asuf, Atisi ag Baye’s grizzled eyebrows rose high into the brim of his turban and one hand touched covertly the small leather amulets he wore on a string around his neck, and when she came to the ritual that had drawn the spirits out of him she was careful to assure him that she did not think it had been her doing, but more likely the magical intervention of the village enad.

  ‘An enad? Ah, the inadan are men of great power.’ Atisi nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is true that they can manipulate the spirits.’

  ‘Ah, the enad was not a man,’ Mariata said.

  ‘A female enad?’ He sounded incredulous. Women could not work with iron: it was taboo. To work with iron meant commanding the spirits that lived in fire, and that could cause irreparable damage to a woman’s ability to bear children. Besides, anything they touched would surely fail: a key would not turn in a lock, or would stick fast and never come free; a tool would crack in two, the head of an adze fly off and harm an animal or a child; a sword or spear-head break at the most crucial moment. Everyone knew that.

  Mariata looked uncomfortable. ‘Not … really.’

  ‘Neither a man nor a woman?’ He sat back suddenly, comprehension dawning. ‘I recall an enad and his wife who had a child once, a child that was neither boy nor girl, but both at the same time. They travelled with the Kel Tedele. Is it possible, I wonder …’

  ‘She – I always called her “she” – was called Tana and was one of the most remarkable people I ever knew. But she lived amongst the Kel Teggart.’

  Now the old trader gave her a direct look. ‘You lived amongst the Kel Teggart?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I heard something … terrible had happened to that tribe.’

  Mariata opened her mouth to speak; but her torrent of words had dried up. She felt as if there was a boulder in her throat and that her feelings battered themselves against it in an attempt to get out. Instead, water welled from her eyes again.

  Atisi looked away. ‘I will go and see to the camels,’ he said gruffly.

  At last as twilight obscured her face she went to find him. ‘You are a man of few words,’ she said, ‘and I am a proud woman, so do not ask me more than I tell you. The child I carry is no child of shame but the child of my husband, son of the amenokal of the Aïr, late of the Kel Teggart. His name was Amastan ag Moussa and he was my moon and stars.’ Her voice caught: it was the first time she had spoken his true name since she had seen him die and somehow saying it aloud made it all the more real. ‘I will not have his child raised in ignominy by a butcher. There, I have told you all there is to tell.’

  Atisi said nothing for a very long time. Then he sighed.
‘Truly, you must have excited much envy for the evil eye to have been cast upon you thus. I hope that with every step into the desert you take the distance between you and your misfortunes will be lengthened. Insh’allah.’

  As they waited for full night to fall, Mariata opened Amastan’s amulet for the first time since her wedding and shook the roll of paper it contained into the palm of her hand. By the light of the rising moon she read the charm that Tana had made for her, but the lighter downstrokes were hard to read and all she could make out was her own name and Amastan’s. At last she gave up: whatever magic it contained had failed to save Amastan’s life, and so was meaningless. Feeling more bereft than ever, she was about to throw the useless scroll away. Then she closed her fist over it: to do so, here, in the realm and the time of the Kel Asuf, was likely to attract even worse luck, so she rolled the parchment back into its hidden compartment and closed the central boss over it again.

  With a thin crescent moon rising slowly overhead, they picked their way down through the rocky darkness towards the road that crossed the disputed territory. To Mariata it was just a dead strip of nothingness, slightly paler than the surrounding ground, artificially flattened and smoothed, an imposition on the face of the wild. Nothing moved upon it as far as she could see, but, as they reached the last tumble of rocks before the road, headlights showed in the distance. The sudden light caught the side of Atisi’s face, and she saw something unreadable flare in his eyes. Then he turned his camel’s head towards her. ‘Get behind the boulders, quickly. There is cover there for one animal but not for three. If they stop I will talk to them. Keep Moushi quiet and whatever happens do not show yourself.’

  Moushi was unwilling to leave her master: it took all of Mariata’s strength to urge her into the cover of the rocks. And only just in time, for the vehicles came roaring over the rise and bore down upon them at terrifying speed. Peering out, Mariata saw how the old trader got down from his camel and loosened his veil. Was it out of disrespect for the soldiers that he did this, she wondered, or so that they would not fear him?

  For a moment it seemed that they had not seen the man and the two camels, or that they were not concerned by his presence. Then the leading jeep screamed to a halt.

  ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ a man shouted, levelling a gun at Atisi. ‘Show me your papers!’

  Atisi gaped. ‘Papers?’ he asked, thickening his accent to a raw peasant twang.

  The man motioned two others out of the jeep. ‘Get his papers.’

  The two soldiers approached, laughing. ‘He’s just an old man, lost in the desert.’

  ‘No one passes without papers. How do we know he’s not a Moroccan spy? And, while you’re at it, search his baggage. We don’t want a repeat of last week’s fiasco.’

  The soldiers dutifully poked and prodded the bags. ‘No guns,’ one of them said at last.

  ‘Idiot,’ said the other, taking the rifle slung over the side of Atisi’s camel. ‘There’s this gun.’

  Moonlight glinted on the antique stock, on the chased silver and the charms etched into it by an ancient smith. The soldiers passed it between each other, laughing. ‘That knackered old thing,’ one said, ‘hardly qualifies as a gun. It’d probably blow your head right off if you tried to fire it.’

  A muscle twitched in Atisi’s jaw, but he said nothing and kept his eyes firmly on the ground.

  ‘So what about it, old man? Where are your documents?’

  ‘I have no documents.’ He stumbled over the word deliberately.

  ‘Everyone has documents.’

  Atisi shrugged. ‘I don’t. I am just a poor old man separated from his caravan. One of my camels fell ill and they left me behind.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Atisi met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘Alone.’

  ‘With friends like that!’ one soldier laughed.

  ‘Just let him go, Ibrahim. If you don’t we’ll have to file a report: it’ll take all night.’

  ‘What’s he got in those packs, anyway? Anything … useful?’

  The other soldier grimaced. ‘Barley, bit of dried meat, dates and stuff. Miserable rations.’

  ‘No beer?’

  Atisi shot him a contemptuous glance. ‘No beer.’

  Ibrahim glared at him. ‘You’re a very lucky man. We don’t have time to waste on threadbare old nomads.’ He looked towards his two subordinates. ‘Take his gun, though.’

  ‘No!’ Atisi’s cry was fierce. ‘It was my grandfather’s.’

  As he grabbed for the rifle the soldier who had hold of it swung it around with casual but deliberate force. It struck the old trader hard across the temple and he fell down with a groan.

  At that moment Moushi let forth a bellow that split the night air: ‘A-wa-aaaagh!’ She lunged forward and Mariata was suddenly flung to the ground, catching her foot awkwardly in the saddlecloth and landing in a tangle of fabric, losing the reins. Thus freed, Moushi ran headlong towards her master, while the third camel, unnerved by this untoward turn of events, wrenched its head back and managed to free itself from the lead rope. Off it went across the road, lit garishly by the headlights of the jeeps, its legs splaying out at all angles.

  Shots rang out.

  For a moment she lay there, stunned, in the shadow of the rocks before a great fear gripped her. Images from the attack on her village, images that she had successfully fought down once that evening, now assailed her. She saw again the sudden invasion of the uniformed men, the flash of their gunfire ripping the night apart; Rahma with her robes on fire, the soldiers forcing Tana to the ground, lust and hatred painted on their dark faces by the leaping flames. Again and again she saw the dark stain spreading across Amastan’s beautiful wedding robe, and the mysterious wet darkness on her own hands as her father dragged her away from her husband’s body. Terror galvanized her. She crabbed sideways into a gap between the rocks, making herself impossibly small, and listened to the shouts of the soldiers and the bellowing of Atisi’s camels, the sounds melding into a single, incomprehensible noise that spoke only of violence and brutality. A scream began to well up inside her. Some part of her – the rational part that urged survival at all costs – knew she could not let it out; but another, wilder part was trying to prevail. Her eyes bulged with the effort not to cry out; she stuffed the corner of her headscarf into her mouth to stop the howl escaping. What was happening to the old man? Had they shot him? She did not dare look for fear of being seen. If they would do such a thing to a defenceless old man, what would they do to her?

  Footsteps came closer, crunching on the loose stones; she heard voices just feet away.

  ‘What’s that over there?’

  Mariata closed her eyes. But there was no escape inside her head. She saw Tana’s robe being torn apart by the soldiers, their hands grabbing at her breasts … Perhaps they would kill her, if she was lucky. The amulet pulsed between her fingers, hot in her palms, as if the little discs of red were burning into her skin. Don’t let them see me …

  A leg came into view, then a hand and a head with a cap on it. The figure bent and a hand reached out and picked something up. ‘An old leather bag. Must have fallen off the camel that ran away.’ The sound of objects falling to the ground. The boot pushed them around.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Just the usual worthless old rubbish these people carry with them. Some candles, a bit of string, a couple of stones, a filthy old rag, a cigarette lighter and an old knife.’

  ‘A knife? Any good to us?’

  ‘It’s covered in their magical symbols.’

  ‘It’s just words, you superstitious fool. Words aren’t magic.’

  ‘Even so, I’m not picking it up. I’ve heard about Tuareg knives with curses carved on them. Knives that have come alive in an enemy’s hand and slit his throat before he could even blink.’

  ‘For God’s sake. Here, let me see.’ A second figure came into view. He bent, his back to Mariata. There was a pause as he examined the s
poils. ‘It’s blunt. What a piece of shit.’ The knife clattered to the ground again. ‘Seems he was alone, after all.’

  ‘Why’d the second camel have a saddle on it, then? Tell me that if you’re so clever.’

  A pause. ‘You’ve seen how these camels behave. How’d you like to be left in the desert without another saddled mount if your own got spooked and bolted?’

  His companion’s acknowledgement of this logic was grudging. ‘Let’s get back. This place is enough to spook anyone. Could have sworn I heard something breathing a minute ago.’

  Mariata held her breath.

  ‘Everyone knows the desert makes odd noises. Rocks get hot during the day and cold at night: they break apart, shed their skins. That’s probably what you heard.’

  The other man contested the point, but the voices were moving away, and soon she could not make out their words. A few minutes later the jeeps roared to life again, the beams of their headlights slid away, and an eerie silence descended. After a very long time Mariata extracted herself from her hiding place and crawled out into the open, dreading what she might find.

  Moushi lay bloodstained and unmoving by the side of the road, but there was no trace at all of Atisi ag Baye, nor of the other two camels. It was as if the djenoun had swallowed them whole. Mariata stared around, but in every direction she saw the same thing: emptiness. Empty darkness, barely touched by a moon that had drifted behind a curtain of cloud.

  Why had she done nothing to help the old man? Now he was gone, possibly dead, and she had done nothing but hide herself like a craven coward. He told you to stay hidden, a voice reminded her, but still she felt ashamed. Numbly, she picked up the fringed leather bag that Tana had given her, the last vestige of her previous life. It was empty, its contents thoughtlessly scattered by the soldiers, but after a few moments of frenzied search she retrieved the whetstones, the skein of cord, the three candles and the knife that had placed such superstitious fear in the heart of the soldier. A glint of moonlight a little way away led her to the Cross of Agadez. She found the bundles of herbs scattered here and there, and at last what she thought might be the flints: but how to tell, amidst a million other sharp-edged stones? She was mildly surprised to find the silver cylinder the soldiers had called a cigarette lighter lying in the dirt. She dropped it back into the bag and it fell with an audible clunk that sounded unnaturally loud in the silent darkness. But where was the scrap of indigo cloth? Suddenly it became vitally important that she find it. She ran her hands through the dust, amongst the stones, without a thought for the creeping scorpions that lurked there, as if her whole life, and that of the life growing inside her, depended on her finding it. It took many long minutes, but at last she found it impaled on a thorn bush. She pressed it to her face, taking in its faint, musty, unmistakable scent, and then she kissed it and stowed it carefully away.